E-marketing push

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has rolled out an e-marketing road map that establishes a framework for the local tourism industry to develop online marketing in the three years to 2011.

The executive director of the authority's information technology office, Phanom Kaributra, said the road map was part of a five-year tourism strategy that aimed to make Thailand the leader in online tourism marketing in the Asia region.

It will enable the Thai tourism industry to improve its marketing strategy to reach millions more potential visitors by marketing over the Internet.

E-marketing is playing an increasingly important role for tourism industries around the world. The World Travel and Tourism Council has reported that around 30 per cent of the US$6.5-trillion (Bt227.42-trillion) value of global tourism business in 2006 came from online sales. Importantly, online travel sales are growing at 20 per cent per year.

"This phenomenon means that tourism businesses around the world need to change, adjust, and move their marketing onto the Internet with the use of an e-marketing strategy," Phanom said.

Of the 1,200 tourism businesses in Thailand, about 75 per cent have never used online marketing. The 25 per cent that have adopted online marketing are mainly travel agents and large hotels and resorts, and they use only three main strategies: search engine, banner advertisements and e-mail marketing.

"The goal of the road map is to encourage the majority of our 1,200 tourism companies to adopt and utilise online marketing in order to help them to increase their competitiveness and their revenue," Phanom said.

TAT itself will adjust its website and database to become a marketing and profiling database for local tourism companies, covering both foreign and Thai tourists. TAT will also encourage small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises to adopt information and communication technology to enhance their marketing activities and make them more efficient.

"We will set up a low-cost e-marketing service for SMEs and will help to promote local tourism services via our two online marketing channels -www.toursimthailand.org and www.thaitravelmart.com. We will also join with universities, Software Park Thailand and the Office of Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion to provide e-marketing training courses for SMEs throughout the country," Phanom said.

 To make the road map into an action plan, TAT plans to work with other stakeholders in the tourism industry to set up an E-tourism Policy Committee, to oversee the development of e-marketing and e-tourism. The committee will consist of representatives from both government and private sectors, and TAT's director will preside.

A subcommittee called the E-tourism Working Committee will be formed to transform the policy and mission into a real action plan.

 "The huge volume of information over the Internet is changing tourists' behaviour and challenging tourism businesses to adapt their marketing strategies," Phanom said. "More tourists are using the Internet as a key channel to seek information and to help them plan. Local tourism businesses in Thailand must adopt e-marketing as an essential tool, enabling them to offer their services to millions of people around the world… before it is too late."